Like other Persian Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates imports much of its labor force from Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines. And it imports prestige from liberal Western institutions like universities and museums.

Among them is New York University, which has settled into a campus built for it — free, thanks to capital from the Emirates and the cheap labor of migrant workers — on an island called Saadiyat, which is being developed by the Emirates as a cultural center and a temple to lavish, luxe, yacht-borne life.

Nearly 16 months ago, about 3,000 construction workers on the island went on strike, many complaining that they had not received a wage increase in as long as eight years. They were making around $200 a month. The Emirates adopted reform legislation after complaints about the exploitation of migrant workers, but trade unions are banned and there is no right to strike.

“They sent us to jail, then they brought us to the airport after suffering in jail for nine days,” a worker, Mohammed Wali Ulla, told investigators with Human Rights Watch a nonprofit international organization. “And then gave us a ticket to fly out.”

Razul al-Haque, who said he worked for a university contractor, told the interviewer, “They arrested everyone they could get their hands on.”

The workers, who had surrendered their passports to their employers, had little leverage. “They pushed me,” said Anamul al-Haque, who worked on New York University’s project. “They slapped me. They demanded that I sign a form written in Arabic. ‘Sign and go to jail,’ they said.”

After Ariel Kaminer and Sean O’Driscoll wrote about the abuses in The Times, John Sexton, the president of New York University, apologized to workers who had not been treated in accordance with the university’s labor standards. An investigative firm, Nardello and Company, was commissioned to look into the situation.

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A migrant worker from Bangladesh in Abu Dhabi. Workers at N.Y.U.'s campus there faced harsh conditions.CreditSergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The “comprehensive review is expected to be completed and published this spring,” N.Y.U.’s chief spokesman, John Beckman, said on Tuesday. Other universities, including Georgetown, Cornell and Carnegie Mellon, have set up campuses in the region but have not been subject to similar scrutiny. The Guggenheim Museum and the Louvre are also building on Saadiyat.

Planting the flag of a Western university’s liberal ideals in an economy that rests on the labors of impoverished migrant workers was an undertaking with moral perils. From the beginning of its Gulf project, N.Y.U. said it wanted the people building its campus to be treated fairly, a declaration it put into a code. Its efforts were important, said Nicholas McGeehan, a Human Rights Watch researcher who wrote the report.

“It is a difficult thing to do, and I actually have some sympathy — I just don’t want to bash N.Y.U.,” Mr. McGeehan said. “They have done a lot of good stuff; the code is good. If it’s enforced, it should protect a lot of workers. This is a good thing.”

But the code had not been “as effective as it should be,” Mr. McGeehan said, adding, “That was because enforcement was pretty weak.”

The Saadiyat Island workers that Human Rights Watch interviewed had to pay high “recruitment fees” to get their jobs — a form of bribery that is officially outlawed but widely practiced. The university had insisted that such recruitment fees be reimbursed by the contractors, but the Human Rights investigation did not find any workers who had gotten the money back. Some of the deported workers were still in debt from having initially bought their jobs.

By Mr. McGeehan’s reckoning, a few hundred workers were deported, a fraction of the thousands who have worked on the site. But it was exemplary punishment. “What about the guys who weren’t deported?” Mr. McGeehan asked. “What if they don’t get their wages — are they going to protest?”

The university, Mr. McGeehan said, ought to require that the contractors and government agencies pay compensation to the workers who were banished.

Mr. Beckman said the university was waiting for the investigative group’s report before deciding its next steps.

During his interviews in Bangladesh, Mr. McGeehan saw how strong a hand the employers had when he met the deported men. “The first thing they say is, ‘Are you from the company?’ ” he said. “ ‘Can we get our jobs back?’ ”

Email: dwyer@nytimes.com
Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Details the Worker Complaints That Blurred N.Y.U.’s Emirates Vision. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe